Obviously my gear isn't great having just started but the mercs seem really bad. Their damage is nearly meaningless in all encounters. Enchantress is what I'm working with at the moment but mostly for her buffs. I hear people use Templars in Inferno for the defensive abilities and I guess heals...

Mercs aren't meant to do any kills. I use the templar because he's good at healing and he also binds opponents, so you don't have to fight them all at once. I think that's far better than killing a monster every now and then. When selecting gear. I only care about vit and protection. DPS and damage bonuses are irrelevant, as they won't sum up to anything of significance.

I just load my enchantress up with either MF or GF gear depending on what I'm farming... she has a Sultan of Blinding Sands (GF) or Blade of Prophecy (MF), whatever relic I found that's got lots of vit, and GF/MF rings and ammy. I like using her because of her armor/AS% bonuses. I guess if you heavily invest in them they can be OK, but yeah, mine's just a MF/GF% mule.

I have gotten all three mercs to do more then 5k dmg and up to 7-8k on my enchantress without being too fanatic.

What you have to remember is that stats are multiplied by 2.5. 100 int = 250 int on a merc. So if you find a nice two handed weapon with 2-300 int and 1300 dps or more which can be farmed, you are doing 4-5k dmg.

One thing that I have found is that your merc's normal attacks have a damage penalty after the DPS is calculated, IE, the DPS shown on her character sheet is the modified one, after the penalties have been calculated. This is the value that their normal attacks are based on.

All special attacks that states using weapon damage (such as the Arcane puddle of the Enchantress) are based on their DPS WITHOUT the penalty. If the Arcane puddle (I cannot remember the name of that spell) still had the penalty included, the puddle wouldn't have any chance, on their own, to down a white mob before her next magic missile even reaches the target.

That however is just my observation, and I may have misunderstood its mechanics.

But the Bottom line is still, Int stat means much more to your merc than to you. A good weapon with high int/dex/str can often be better dps for your merc (sometimes surprisingly much better).

Load a scoundrel that has multishot up with a windforce that has 45% chance on knockback and you have a good chance that when he shoots, something will be knocked back, giving you more breathing room.
If you are a DH get a windforce yourselve and be team knockback.

Give your templar a Sever and the enemies will stay dead, or a Azurewrath for some freezing and getting those undead away.

Throw any merc a Puzzle Ring and you might have goblins popping constantly!

Loading your mercs up with some gear that has high primary stat for them and vit gives, throw iin some res and they have alot of survivability.
Plus having some added fun / helpful effects is never bad, now is it.
They wont be killers, but can certainly help out alot.

I recently finished leveling my Enchantress to 60 so that I could give her some nice gear. I found that you can get nice staves pretty cheaply. So I managed to find a great rare 9xx dps staff with ~430int on it along with a bunch of other decent stats, for under 100k buyout. I also bought a few cheapo jewelry items for her, only caring about +int.

In the end, she has ~4.5k shown dps. With her special attacks, she is able to finish off trash monsters that I start on. And her chicken spell can be very useful at just the right times when fighting elite packs.

One thing that I have found is that your merc's normal attacks have a damage penalty after the DPS is calculated, IE, the DPS shown on her character sheet is the modified one, after the penalties have been calculated. This is the value that their normal attacks are based on.

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Yeah, I was reading somewhere that their normal attack is only 15% weapon damage.

They all provide neat buffing abilities, but don't contribute enough to really alter the game. They help you out, but they're also lackluster enough that you can pick the worst of the three if you prefer (for style reasons or whatever) without loosing out too badly. They basically look after themselves too, and don't require any micromanagement or (ack) resurrection fees.

I've never setup my mercs to do any damage but to take full advantage of thier skills.

I mostly play WW Barb and critical mass Wizard and use a Scoundral merc. Firstly equip him with any ice base bow so multi-shot slows enemies down and also use anatomy to passively increase my critical hit chance by 3% for free. Crippling shot obvisouly cripples them and dirty fighting gives me three seconds of physical damage reduction.

Stack him up with MF and GF gear and I cant ask for more than that.

Kamap has some good ideas as well. I like the Sever usage on a Templer.

They all provide neat buffing abilities, but don't contribute enough to really alter the game. They help you out, but they're also lackluster enough that you can pick the worst of the three if you prefer (for style reasons or whatever) without loosing out too badly. They basically look after themselves too, and don't require any micromanagement or (ack) resurrection fees.

Honestly think the Dev team struck pretty well on these.

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I agree, the developer team did well with D3 mercenaries. They strike a good balance of making up for the fact that your missing team mates aren't tanking/distracting 50% or more of the monsters while not being very powerful (without a great deal of effort and some legendaries) in other respects.

Re: Mercs.... do they ever get decent?<iframe src=http://www.bandedecomics.com/rss/si

I completely agree that the Mercs are very well balanced. If they did much more damage they would start to feel overpowered in my opinion.

I play mainly as a DH and couldn't be much happier with my Templar. I gave up on him doing much damage pretty early on (although I'm often pleasantly surprised). I focus mainly on loading him up with Vitality and Armor, with Strength (which of course helps boost his Armor as well as damage) and MF being secondary. I don't recall how much life he has at the moment, but it is significantly more than my DH. He tanks pretty damn well, especially now that followers take so much less damage from arcane orbs and the like. He can stand right on the orb itself and walk away nearly unscathed. Tough little dude, that Kormac. He rarely dies other than in Boss fights... although he manages his way through those occasionally as well.

In Inferno I don't find his healing as helpful as I would like, but Charge (stun) and Intimidate (slows enemies when he is hit) can be invaluable at times. Combining those skills with my Caltrops can slow hordes of fast enemies to an absolute standstill. Throw in some cold or skill-based slowing damage and you're pretty much shooting down statues most of the time.

I have tried the Windforce on the Scoundrel approach, and it is pretty effective. I can definitely see why some people swear by it. I personally prefer the slowing-based Templar, but that's just mainly because I love setting traps and using a more tactical approach (I'm dying to see how the new multiple Sentry change is going to play into that, but I'm getting OT). It also just feels a little odd to have a ranged Merc paired with a DH.

As for the Enchantress, I've tried her out here and there, but I honestly haven't used her enough to give a very informed opinion. Obviously, quite a few people love her... and the chicken thing is certainly entertaining. When I've tried it out it just seems a bit too inconsistent and unpredictable for me, but again... I've used her very rarely so far, mainly with melee characters.